Imran, Maryam square off over ‘NROs’

Ag Agencies

SWAT/SKARDU: Prime Minister Imran Khan and Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) vice president Maryam Nawaz on Friday flung recriminations over “NROs” — concessions — in separate public gatherings hundreds of miles away.

Khan delivered a fiery speech against the opposition Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) in Swat, while he was there to distribute his signature Sehat Insaf Card among the poor. “The country will only prosper when all of its citizens treated equally before the law and given across-the-board basic facilities of life,” the Prime Minister said in his address.

He then launched a broadside on Maryam’s father, former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, saying there is “no greater enemy for Pakistan than he”, and described him as a “jackal speaking from abroad”. He regretted that all such “bandits of the country” had gathered on a platform to put pressure on him to acquit them from their crimes. “They know that Imran Khan is never going to give them an NRO (National Reconciliation Ordinance), so they have started a dirty game of ridiculing the state institutions just so they can save their looted money,” he said.

Khan said: “The day I will give NRO to them to saving my ‘chair’, will be the day I commit the biggest treason with the country.”

He said the “the daughter of Sharif” was using bad language about armed forces and intelligence agencies. “As a social norm, we give respect to women. However she is taking advantage of this,” he said, adding that in any other country, “such remarks could have landed her into prison” but “in Pakistan we respect women so she has permission to talk freely”.

The Prime Minister said it was a decisive moment for the country to take to task its leaders who plundered billions of the nation’s money, but who insisted to be treated above law.

He recalled that the misappropriation of the national kitty during previous tenures resulted in multiplying foreign debt from Rs6,000 billion to Rs 30,000 billion, putting a burden on the nation.

Some 370 miles away, Maryam Nawaz delivered a speech on the second day of her party’s election campaign in Gilgit-Baltistan. “He (Imran Khan) keeps saying ‘I will not give them an NRO, I will not give them an NRO’ ... first you were ‘selected’ and now you are ‘rejected’.”

Then addressing him directly, Maryam said: “Imran Khan Sahib, you will be the one to not get an NRO.” The PML-N and Nawaz Sharif “will not give you and NRO”. She said the country had changed and those who try to steal votes would face the wrath of the people.